1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus which images image data, an imaging method and a recording medium with an imaging program recorded thereon.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a camera that stores imaged image data one by one in a buffer, and reads out a plurality of pieces of consecutively-imaged image data from the buffer when there is a change in the image or audio, and records in a recording media (refer to Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2004-304418, for example). This camera can record, in the recording medium, the consecutively-imaged image data including the image data imaged by going back to the past from a time point when the existence of the change of the image or audio has been detected (the time point is called a trigger detection moment, henceforth).
Since this camera sets up a thinning pattern of the image data in advance corresponding to a time interval from the trigger detection moment, and determines a ratio at which the imaged image data is thinned and recorded by this thinning pattern, the camera can reduce the total amount of the image data to be recorded in the recording medium, and therewith, can record the image data at the trigger detection moment which has high possibility of having a decisive moment recorded, with the quality thereof maintained.
However, the camera described in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2004-304418, performs thinning after once having stored in the buffer all the image data imaged before the trigger detection moment, and makes the thinned image data be recorded in the recording medium finally. That is, the camera performs thinning of the image data after having stored all the image data in the buffer until the maximum long time in which the storing is possible. Therefore though the image data made to be recorded in the recording medium finally is the image data after being thinned, the storage capacity corresponding to the image data before thinning, that is, all the image data obtained by imaging for a predetermined time was required for the capacity of the buffer. That is, there was a problem that the capacity of the buffer had to be set up greater than the capacity of the image data to be finally made to be recorded.